But a time soon came when tribute was accepted in place of extermination, when leagues were made with the Canaanitish cities, and the Israelites intermarried with the older population of the country.

As in Britain after the Saxon conquest, the invaders settled in the country rather than in the towns, so that while the peasantry was Israelite the townsfolk either remained Canaanite or were a mixture of the two races.
The mixture introduced among the Israelites the religion and the beliefs, the manners and the immoralities, of the Canaanitish people.
The Mosaic legislation was forgotten; the institutions prescribed in the wilderness were ignored.

Alone at Shiloh, in the heart of Ephraim, was a memory of the past observed; here the descendants of Aaron served in the tabernacle, and kept alive a recollection of the Mosaic code.

Here alone no image stood in the sanctuary of the temple; the ark of the covenant was the symbol of the national God.
But the influence of Shiloh did not extend far.

The age that succeeded the entrance into Canaan, was one of anarchy and constant war.